1066
Souter, J., dissenting
B
The second point of reference to come out of today's cases is the rule that if a State begins its map-drawing efforts with a compact majority-minority district required by Gingles, the State may not rely too heavily on racial data in adjusting that district to serve traditional districting principles. While this rule may indeed provide useful guidance to state legislatures, its inherent weakness is clear from what was said above, supra, at 1060-1062: it is in theory and in fact impossible to apply "traditional districting principles" in areas with substantial minority populations without considering race. As to some of those principles, to be sure, the ban on the overuse of racial data may not have much significance; racially identified communities can be identified in other ways and will be, after today. But protecting a minority incumbent may be another matter, since we cannot assume, as the plurality does, that reliance on information about "party affiliation" will serve to protect a minority incumbent, and we cannot tell when use of racial data will go too far on the plurality's view, ante, at 962-963. It therefore may well be that loss of the capacity to protect minority incumbency is the price of the rule limiting States' use of racial data. If so, it will be an exceedingly odd result, when the whole point of creating yesterday's majority-minority district was to remedy prior dilution, thus permitting the election of the minority incumbent who (the Court now seems to declare) cannot be protected as any other incumbent could be.
C
The third point of reference attributable to today's cases is as yet only a possibility; a suggestion in the discussions of the narrow tailoring test that States seeking to avoid violating § 2 of the Voting Rights Act may draw the district that the Voting Rights Act compels, and this district alone. See Shaw II, ante, at 915-918 (rejecting North Carolina's District 12 because it does not sufficiently coincide with the
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